Grave Digger
by Ridley160
Summary: Digging a grave in the cold of the night, he never imagined this person would be the one to fill it.


Disclaimer-I own nothing of Re-Animator.

Author's Note: A short little fic I thought would make a good read. I don't recall where I came up with the idea. There's no real plot...just a blurb kind of thing, hope you enjoy it!

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Brown soil piled up slowly as the shovel dug down into the dirt, the cold hard steel breaking apart the earth lifting it up and discarding it in another area where the previous had been placed. The sole of a shoe pressing hard against the top to assist the end of the metal object to pierce the solid ground, again and again the motion was repeated. Rocks clanked as they hit the shovel, some scraped the bottom making a scratch like noise. Over and over hands that held onto the wooden handle, gripped tightly as each portion of soil was taken and placed elsewhere. The hole got deeper, longer; sweat covered the worker's brow as the body moved repeatedly scooping more dirt. The night air was cool and a gentle breeze made the leaves sway, the distant sound of frogs could be heard chirping from the marsh nearby, they sounded much like a chorus of crickets. The shovel was dropped to the ground; it was no longer needed for the moment. A heavy sighed escaped as tired eyes examined the work that the hands arms and tool had done. Eyes stared down at it accepting what its purpose was to be, a shallow grave for the one and only Herbert West.

Dan wiped away the sweat upon his forehead, his work was nearly done. His years of service was about to end with what he always suspected to be his escape from the mad scientist. Herbert's death, it was the only way he could move on without guilt, the feeling of cowardice, running away from his problems and responsibilities. That was his duty, to watch over the obsessive little man and make sure he didn't get them into too much of a predicament. However he failed that night, he was free to go on and live his life, but the knowledge of his failure would forever be with him. He knew better than to let Herbert re-animate corpses alone, he knew better than to allow Herbert to mess with bodies bigger than he was, he knew better to check if the re-animated was really dead one put out of their misery.

Hands grabbed the blood spattered white shirt, took a hold of the upper body and pulled; the lifeless body was drug to its final resting place. Dan placed the corpse, once known as Herbert West into the hole he had dug. The skin was pale; the flesh felt cold, it seemed that only minutes ago it was alive and vibrant. Moments ago he was still conscious and clinging to life, seconds ago the re-agent had been administered. But it hadn't been that recent, everything had been spanned throughout the nightly hours. The Re-Agent had been administered nearly an hour before he began to dug the shallow grave, a long hour of waiting an hoping but nothing stirred in the motionless body. Not even a twitch or a spasm, this new re-agent of Herbert's had been a dud and as far as Dan knew Herbert didn't have any of his previous formulas on hand. Besides the bottle he had used on his last experiment.

Herbert had wanted to test one final subject with the old serum, so he could better understand the difference between the two, but the man didn't live to see the workings of his final re-agent. Unfortunately there was nothing to miss, it didn't work at all, Herbert's death had been in vain. His years of work came down to nothing but a useless bottle of glowing fluid, Herbert's first serum had been more successful than this new one. The subjects had been most aggressive then, but the fact was they were alive. Herbert didn't even have the opportunity to experience the real workings of his creation, which Dan suspected had been a literal dying wish. It would be quite the experience to fall into death's clutches then escape with the knowledge of what came after. To know what to expect when the body finally gave out.

Dan retook the shovel into his hands and began to fill the hole with the earth he had just minutes ago taken from it. Brown soil sprinkled over the motionless corpse, and little by little the body of the man known as Herbert West was buried beneath. Briefly, Dan patted down the loose dirt with the end of the tool then stood staring down at the grave. It was almost too unbelievable, the knowledge that his partner was gone. Years of assistance, failed experiments, near death encounters, he and Herbert had been through it all, of course good luck can always run out and Herbert's time had been that very evening. Dan had always thought of the man as unbeatable, for as small and almost fragile as he was Herbert could take a lot. Time and time again it seemed West would meet his end, from constricting entrails to a collapsed crypt; he had faced many situations that should have killed him. Unfortunately that night was just too much; there was no way out of it other than death.

They had done what had always been done, corpse becomes aggressive shoot it. Dan had thought all was well and had left the basement, to let Herbert finish up, Dan didn't even bother to ask anymore, he just let the young man do whatever needed to be done, as long as it wasn't too much of an endangerment to their or other's lives. But then again, practically all of their experiments were dangerous to some extent, nothing involving death was safe. The life he and Herbert had led was not safe. Three years of loyal assistance, Daniel had seen it all. What had once disgusted and made him feel faint became an everyday occurrence. He was numb, and none of West's tests and experiments could rouse any reaction out of him, he no longer felt much emotion.

Dan had come to realize that he had become much like Herbert, living in solitude with no romantic prospects, no real conversations, and human contact, everything Herbert had been without his whole life Dan experienced for three years. In that time he had become much like the man he had grown to despise, and in that began to despise himself. Perhaps that was why he did it, tried to bring the man back to life, Herbert would have done it, so perhaps that was the reason he had tried to do the same.

So he stayed, feeling a need to watch over the man he wanted to hate. As much as he tried to blame all of his losses on West, it all came back to himself. It had been his decision to allow the odd fellow medical student to share his home, and for that he blamed himself for all that had happened afterwards. Once he had lost all that was dear to him in life, he had only one thing left and that was Herbert. So he stayed, as a punishment. He didn't deserve anything better, he had to face his mistakes and not run away. He stayed for that, to remind himself of what not to become, but he had failed in that, just as he had failed Herbert that night.

Exhausted Dan walked back to the dismal shack he called a home, the shovel in his hand dragging behind him. His mind was a blank, he felt nothing. He didn't think of what would happen now, how he would have to explain the sudden disappearance of Herbert West, the man had never been gone one day from the hospital. Dan didn't care; he had learned to stop caring a long time ago, it only led to heartache. He had learned that the hard way when all that he loved so dearly had been stripped from his life. He dropped the shovel to the ground, making a clanging sound as it fell upon the gravel. The door creaked as he opened it and banged shut once he was in the ancient home. Darkness and the smell of decay was all that greeted him now, at least before another living human being lived in the house with him, if Herbert could be qualified as living.

He had a heartbeat, his lungs took in oxygen, he spoke, and he could see, he could hear, but emotionally Herbert was not human or alive at all. As Dan kicked off his dirt covered shoes he wondered, as he usually did, what made Herbert detach himself from society. Dan knew his own reasons, to protect himself, but with Herbert it was a mystery, everything about the man was a mystery. In the end it didn't matter, in their line of work there was no room for emotion, and Dan had stripped himself of every last bit of it he had. He ascended the creaky wooden stairs to his room, as if this night had been like any other, he wanted to believe it was. As twisted as it was Dan didn't want to face the fact that Herbert West was gone forever, he knew the man was dead and buried, but there was still a little bit of him that wished it wasn't true. For as much of him that had been lost throughout the years, Dan still held a portion of emotion. After all Herbert was the only person he had with him, the company was dismal and at times they hardly spoke, but it was company none the less, it was only natural to grow attached, as much as he wanted to deny it.

Down the hall he walked, the odor of death was present even up in that area of the house. Bodies still resided down in the basement, waiting to be discarded along with their master Herbert West. But that would have to wait until morning. Digging one grave for the night was all Dan could do, and even to do that he had to muster up his very last bit of strength. Fighting off the maddened zombie had taken a lot out of him, along with dragging Herbert up the stairs. It was all over now, and he chose to lock those images in a very distant part of his mind, along with many other memories involving Herbert and himself. Instances he never wanted to dwell upon again, but they never were gone and he was always aware of them as a nagging feeling, and every so often he was reminded of events and encounters he was not proud of.

Once in his room Dan slipped off his bloody shirt and pants, he was too exhausted for a shower, he crawled into bed, like the many times before and laid his head down to sleep. How any man could sleep under the conditions and haunting images that still plagued his mind Dan was unsure. He knew he had done it many times. Soon he drifted off but not even his dreams let him escape the horrors of that night, the scenes still flashed in his sleep. The look of Herbert's face moments before he fell into permanent unconsciousness, that was one clear picture he could never push away because he had never seen it before. Herbert West with a look of fear, blood smeared on the walls and work area, his hand extended out towards Dan in a desperate gesture. The corpses' large powerful hands clasped over Herbert's throat.

As the images replayed in Dan's dreams, it was interspersed with the scenes of Meg's death. How similar they were, and that only made Herbert's death feel even more tragic. Meg's strangled cries as the burned hand grasped tightly onto her fragile neck still echoed in his mind. How she fell instantly to the floor of the elevator once the arm had been hacked away from its owner, her eyes closed and body unmoving, no intake of breath or pulse. She had looked so peaceful when lying on the hospital bed, a peace he had disturbed the instant he injected her sweet body with the serum of life. Her final cry of terror, a haunting sound he would never forget, as she returned briefly to life. That was his turning point, the instant he chose to re-animate his former lover was when he had began his downward spiral into near insanity, when he had become like the man who started it all.

Dan tossed and turned in the bed, as the nightmares overtook him, he saw blood everywhere, splattered on walls and pooling on floors, the morgue representing a slaughterhouse than a place of rest. Steal hooks suspended from the ceiling and half decapitated corpses hanging from the wicked devices. Some complete open cavities only flesh and bone, gutted like a cow and innards spilt upon the floor into a mass of gooey organs. Others lying upon the cold steel tables, parts placed and stitched together in all the wrong ways, creatures of no rhyme or reason, just assemblies of human and animal tissue. All of them horrid beings, except for one right in front of him the cold pale body of his beloved, the only one perfectly intact and untouched. The smell of rotting dead was unbearable, worse than any morgue, or any of the decaying bodies he had been around throughout the years.

He heard it then, the grim echoing scream of Megan Halsey, her final utterance before lapsing back into unawake-able death. The serum hadn't been the potent one. They all rose at the sound of Meg's shriek, the grotesque twisted figures that had once been human beings all around, blood oozing from open wounds and sloppy stitching jobs, saliva dibbling from their open mouths. They fell from their steel tabletops only to begin crawling towards him. Animal like snarls and growls escaping from their open mouths, reaching out with whatever appendages were capable.

A boney hand grasped onto his arm and as he looked down he saw a half rotted face, white maggots wriggling into what was left of the grey spoiled flesh, meat hung loosely from the dirt caked bones it stared up with a single seeing green eye, a purple like muscle surrounded it and still clung to the bone. The only flesh holding the jaw to the skull was a few strands of muscle like tissue such as what was surrounding its remaining eye, all its teeth were fully exposed bloody and dribbling down the bone of the chin. It opened what was left of its mouth as if to speak and as the bones of the hand clutched down hard on Dan's arm it uttered in a distorted haunting voice.

"Daniel, I live….I live!"

Dan sat upright in bed, his heart racing in his chest, and body covered in a cold sweat. It had been awhile since he had such an intense nightmare. He breathed slowly to try and calm himself, the shock was beginning to wear off and the realization of what had happened that night was slowly overtaking him. It was sickening to admit but Dan liked having some sort of feeling again, it was frightening but he hadn't felt such a rush in nearly two years. In the past he had often wondered if he was going mad, he was enjoying the feeling of apprehensiveness and fear. However his fear soon grew when he realized, he wasn't alone. In the darkness his eyes had adjusted but details were still hard to pick up, but the morning light outside his window and the silhouette before it was all he needed. He sat there frozen unsure of what to do, if what he saw was real or just an illusion from his increasing insane mind. He heard it wheezing as it breathed, and creaking floorboards as it slowly approached the bed.

Dan froze, unsure of what to do; he could either face whatever was coming towards him or flee the room. Only he didn't know where he would go in that early morning, he was in the middle of nowhere. Knowing there was really no other alternative; Dan reached over to the bedside lamp and prepared himself to face another grotesque figure from the basement.

The light switched on and filled the room, a startled yelp escaped from Dan the moment he laid eyes on the figure before him. His jaw hung slack and he stared with wide eyes at the undead intruder. The clothing was dirty, caked with dirt and blood, soil matted in the dark hair. With each breath was a wheezing sound due to the soil in the lungs, the hands that hung by the sides were brown, and dirt packed under the nails, the undead's skin was a frightful pale color and dark circles had formed beneath the blank eyes, blue and purple lines from dying veins and nerves where easily seen in the flesh. They spread across the face, a dark mass along the jaw and creeping up the face to the cheeks. The corpse that stood before him was none other than Herbert West, the Re-Animator.

"Daniel…." His voice was gravelly and unnatural, distorted from the much filling his lungs and caked within the throat. "I…live…"

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Author's note: The end! I hope it was a fun read, I've been reading a lot of H.P. Lovecraft lately so I while I wrote this I tried to add more of a haunting, and creepy feel to parts. Especially the nightmare, I don't know if I accomplished that or not, but it was fun to write! Reviews are greatly, greatly appreciated 


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